Clinical Informatics Utilization in Nursing Administration, Service and Academic among Directors of Nursing in Community Hospitals, Southern Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this descriptive research was to explore the level of the use of clinical informatics, and problems in using clinical informatics for nursing administration, nursing service, and nursing academic among directors of nursing in community hospitals. The subjects of this study were 100 nursing directors of community hospitals in the southern part of Thailand, which were selected by simple random sampling without replacement. The instrument of this study was a questionnaire about the use and problems in using the clinical informatics for management, service, and academic of nursing directors. An instrument was valid by three experts that the content validity index was 0.84, and the part of using the clinical informatics in the questionnaire was found that Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.98. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics: frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The results of the study revealed that the overall level of the use of clinical informatics for management, service, and academic was at a moderate level (=2.54, SD=0.54). The level of the use of clinical information of each aspect was at a moderate level which nursing management aspect was the highest level (=2.71, SD=0.58), followed by nursing service, (=2.56, SD=0.58), and nursing academic (=2.36, SD=0.67). Most of the subjects had experiences in using clinical informatics from information files and registration reports. When classified, it was found that most of the subjects used clinical informatics for bedsores prevention (92.0 %), and urinary tract prevention (92.0 %), followed by falls prevention (90.0 %), and readmission prevention (87.0 %). Problems of using the clinical informatics were reported most often in nursing administration (41.0 %), followed by nursing academics (32.0 %), and nursing services (31.0 %). It is concluded that organizations concerned with the development of health information systems need to design courses on the use of clinical informatics that are specifically for administrators in order to develop the competency of nursing administrators in terms of knowledge and skills in utilization of clinical informatics for effective organizational management.